Chapter X: Part 10

But it may be said, that the very supposition which we now make is an absurd one; that the mere presence of the sun in the firmament, at a distance from the water, cannot be supposed to convert it into ice, unless the water gain or lose something, and consequently cease to have absolute identity; and that the case, therefore, is of no value, as illustrating the compatibility of change of state in our various sensations, with unaltered identity of the sentient mind. To this I might answer, that although the presence of the sun certainly does not operate in the manner supposed,--as the sequences of events are now arranged in the great system of nature,--it is only by experience, and not by intuition or reasoning, we know, that the presence of the sun has not the very effect which the separation of caloric now produces, and that there is nothing absolutely more wonderful in the one case than in the other. If our experience had been the reverse of this,--if the change of place of a few particles of caloric had not, as now, converted the liquid water into that solid congeries of crystals which we call ice,--we should then have found as little difficulty in conceiving that it should not have this effect, as we now find in adapting our belief to the particular series of events which constitute our present experience.

It is not necessary, however, to have recourse to suppositions of this kind; since the system of nature, even according to our present experience of it, furnishes sufficient proof of changes as wonderful in the state of bodies produced obviously at a distance, and, therefore, without any loss or addition which can affect their identity. For sufficient evidence of this, I need appeal only to the agency of the celestial _gravitation_; that gigantic energy of nature which fills the universe, like the immediate presence of the Deity himself,--to which, in the immensity of its influence, the distances, not from planets to planets merely, but from suns to suns, are like those invisible spaces between the elements of the bodies around us, that seem actual contact to our eyes,--and in comparison with which, the powers, that play their feeble part in the physical changes on the surface of our earth, are as inconsiderable as the atoms, on which they exercise their little dominion, are to the massy orbs which _it_ wields and directs at will,--

“Those bright millions of the heavens,
Of which the least full Godhead had proclaim'd,
And thrown the gazer on his knee.”--“Admire
The tumult untumultuous! All on wing,
in motion all; yet what profound repose!
What fervid action, yet no noise!--as aw'd
To silence by the presence of their Lord.”

The action of these great planetary bodies on each other,--it surely cannot be denied,--leaves them separate identities, precisely as before; and it is a species of agency, so essential to the magnificent harmony of the system, that we cannot conceive it to have been interrupted, for a single moment, since the universe itself was formed. An action, therefore, has been constantly taking place on all the bodies in the universe,--and consequently a difference of some sort produced,--which yet leaves their identities unaffected. But, though the identity of the substance of the separate orbs is not affected by their mutual attractions, the _state_, or temporary physical character, of these orbs,--considered individually as one great whole,--_must_ be affected,--or it would be absurd to speak of their mutual agency at all; for action implies the sequence of a change of some sort, and there can be no action, therefore, where the substances continue precisely the same, and their state also precisely the same, as before the action. Accordingly, we find, on our own globe, that great changes of state, such as form the most striking of its regular visible phenomena, are produced by this distant operation. The waters of our ocean, for example, rise and fall,--and, therefore, must have altered states, or physical tendencies, in consequence of which they rise and fall, as there is no corresponding addition or subtraction of matter,--at regular intervals,--which it is in our power to predict with infallible accuracy,--not because we can divine any loss of identity in the fluid mass,--any internal change in its elementary composition, or the nature and varieties of the winds, which are to sweep along its surface,--but because we know well, at what hours, and in what relative situation, a certain great body, at the distance of some hundreds of thousands of miles, is to be passing along the heavens.

If, then, the mere position of a distant heavenly body can cause the particles of our ocean to arrange themselves in a different configuration,--from that in which they would otherwise have existed, and, therefore, must have produced in the particles that change of state, which forces them, as it were, into this altered form,--without addition to them of any thing, or subtraction of any thing,--in short, leaving in them the same absolute numerical or corpuscular identity as before,--there surely can be no greater difficulty, in supposing, as in the case before imagined, that a certain position of the sun might have immediately caused the particles of a distant liquid, to arrange themselves in the particular configuration, that constitutes the solid ice,--which, though perhaps a more striking change of state, would not have been more truly a change of state, than that, which it now unquestionably produces, in modifying the rise or fall of our tides. And, if a distant body can produce in _matter_ a change of state, without affecting its identity, by any addition or subtraction, we may surely admit, that the presence of an external body, as in perception, may, in _mind_ also, produce a change of state, without affecting its identity; unless indeed, (which is not impossible, because nothing is impossible to human folly,) we should be inclined to reverse our prejudices, and maintain, that matter may be easily conceived to change the affinities or tendencies that form its physical character, in the particular circumstances observed, without any addition or subtraction of substance, but that some positive addition or subtraction of substance is, notwithstanding, essential to the simple changes or affections of the mind.

If the _moon_ were suddenly annihilated, our earth would still be the same identical planet, without the loss or gain of a single particle of substance. But the state of this planet, as a whole, and of every atom of this planet, would be instantly altered, in many most important respects,--so completely altered, indeed, that not an atom of the mass would tend to the other atoms of the mass, in the same manner as before. In like manner, if the _light_,--which now, operating on one of my organs of sense, causes my mind to exist in the state that constitutes the sensation of a particular colour,--were suddenly to vanish, the state of my mind would be instantly changed, though my mind itself, considered as a substance, would still continue unaltered. In both cases,--the spiritual, and the material,--and in both cases, alike,--_absolute identity_, in the strictest sense of the term, is _consistent_ with innumerable _diversities_.

In the discussion of this supposed difficulty, I have chosen, for illustration, in the first place, to consider the _planetary attractions_, in preference to those which occur, in the minuter changes, that are simply terrestrial; because in the case of operations at a distance, it is impossible for us, not to perceive, that, even in matter, a change of state is not inconsistent with complete permanence of absolute corpuscular identity; while, in the compositions or decompositions, that occur spontaneously, or by artificial experiment, in the physical changes on the surface of our earth, the additions or subtractions of matter, that appear to us to constitute these phenomena, truly destroy the corpuscular identity of the substances, in which the change takes place; and the change of state is thus considered by us, as implying a positive substantial change. But when we examine even these phenomena a little more deeply, we shall find, that, like the great operations of gravitation on the masses of the universe,--the change, in these also, is not a positive change of substance, but is simply a change of state in a congeries of independent substances, which we term _one_ substance, merely because the spaces, that are really between them, are imperceptible to our very imperfect organs; the addition or subtraction of matter being not that which constitutes the new states or tendencies of the particles which continue present, but merely that which gives occasion to those changes of state or tendency;--as the positions of the heavenly bodies do not constitute the phenomena of our tides, but merely give occasion to that difference of state in the particles of the ocean, in consequence of which they assume of themselves a different configuration. Man is placed, as it has been truly said, on a point, between two infinities,--the infinitely _great_, and the infinitely _little_. It may be an extravagant speculation, to which I have before alluded,--but it is not absolutely absurd, to suppose, that in the unbounded system of nature, there may be beings, to whose vision the whole planetary attendants of each separate sun, which to us appear to revolve at distances so immense, may yet seem but one small cohesive mass, in the same manner, as to those animalculæ, whose existence and successive generations had been altogether unknown to man, till the microscope created them, as it were to his feeble sight,--and which, perhaps, are mighty animals compared with races of beings still more minute, that are constantly living in our very presence, and yet destined never to be known to us,--those bodies, which to us seem one small cohesive mass, may appear separated by distances, relatively as great, as to us are those of the planets. That light, itself a _body_, should pass freely through a mass of solid crystal, is regarded by us as a sort of physical wonder; and yet it is far from impossible, that, between the atoms which compose this apparently solid mass, whole nations of living beings maybe dwelling, and exercising their mutual works of peace or hostility; while perhaps, if philosophy can be exercised, in brains of such infinitesimal dimensions, in the same manner as in our coarser organs, the nature of the atoms, or distant worlds around them, may be dividing with endless absurdities, the Ptolemies and Aristotles of the little republics. We have all so much of the nature of the inhabitants of Brobdignag, that a supposition of this kind,--which is perhaps truly in itself not a very probable one,--yet appears to us much more improbable, than it really is. We smile, as recognizing our own nature, when the sovereign of that country of giants is represented by the most unfortunate, or rather the most fortunate of all voyagers, as “turning to his first minister, who waited behind him with a white staff, near as tall as the mainmast of the Royal Sovereign, and observing how contemptible a thing was human grandeur, which could be mimicked by such diminutive insects.” “And yet,” said he, “I dare engage, those creatures have their titles and distinctions of honour; they contrive their nests and burrows, that they call houses and cities; they make a figure in dress and equipage; they love, they fight, they dispute, they cheat, they betray.” And we fully enter into the difficulty which the _savans_ of the country, who had all agreed that the new-discovered animal could not have been produced according to the regular laws of nature, must have found, in giving him a name. “One of them seemed to think that I might be an embryo, or abortive birth. But this opinion was rejected by the other two, who observed my limbs to be perfect and finished; and that I had lived several years, as it was manifest from my beard, the stumps whereof they plainly discovered through a magnifying-glass. They would not allow me to be a dwarf, because my littleness was beyond all degrees of comparison; for the queen's favourite dwarf, the smallest ever known in that kingdom, was near thirty feet high. After much debate, they concluded unanimously, that I was only _relplum scalcath_, which is interpreted literally _lusus naturæ_; a determination exactly agreeable to the modern philosophy of Europe, whose professors, disdaining the old evasion of occult causes, whereby the followers of Aristotle endeavoured in vain to disguise their ignorance, have invented this wonderful solution of all difficulties, to the unspeakable advancement of human knowledge.”[50]

Whatever may be thought of speculations of this kind, however, with respect to the relative distance of the atoms of bodies, it is not the less certain, that these atoms are separate substances, independent of the other similar or different substances that apparently adhere to them in continuity,--that they are, in truth, the only material substances which really exist, since the bodies which we term masses are only those very atoms under another name,--that they remain, and cannot but remain, identical, amid all the changes of chemical composition or decomposition,--and that the change which they suffer, therefore, however strikingly their physical character may be altered for the time, is a change not of _substance_ but of _state_ only. In the case of the formation of _ice_, for example, the elementary atoms themselves, which are all that truly exist in nature, are not, and cannot be, changed; but particles, which were formerly easily separable from adjacent particles, now resist this separation by a considerable force. There is a change in their _state_, therefore, since they now exist with a different degree of tendency toward each other,--a change, to which the separation of a quantity of caloric may, indeed, have given occasion, but which is to be distinguished from that momentary separation itself, since the solidity, which is only another name for the corpuscular resistance, continues after the separation is complete, and would continue forever, unless a change of temperature were again to restore that former state or tendency of the particles, in which they were easily separable. To him who has learned to consider bodies as, what they truly are, a multitude of separate and independent corpuscles, there is no change of identity, and cannot be any change of identity, in all the phenomena or changes of the universe. The atoms, which alone existed, continue as before; and all which constitutes the phenomenon, or varieties of successive phenomena, is a change of their place or tendency.

This _corpuscular_ view of the material universe,--which, of course, admits an infinite variety of applications, corresponding with the infinite variety of its phenomena,--has many most striking analogies in that moral universe, with the phenomena of which we are chiefly concerned. Indeed, when we consider any of the masses before us, as deriving all its apparent magnitude from a number of separate bodies, of which it is composed,--any one of which, _individually_, would be too minute to be distinguishable by us,--it is scarcely possible not to think of the similarity which it presents to the multitudes of human beings that are as it were, massed together in the great nations of the earth; and in which any single individual, if he could be supposed to have exercised his powers separately, would have been truly as insignificant as a single atom separated from the mass of which it is a part. What we call the greatness of a nation, is nothing more than the union of a number of little interests and little passions joined in one common object; to which insignificant elements, so wonderful when combined, if we could distinctly reduce, by analysis, the most unrivalled power that has ever commanded the admiration and envy of the world, it would, at first view, run some little risk of appearing contemptible. The advantages of this social union of mankind, as silently felt at every moment, are unquestionably so infinite in comparison, as almost to sink into nothing the occasional evils to which the aggregation and massing of so many powers, when ill directed, may give rise,--though these terrific evils, when they occur, may dwell more permanently in the mind;--like the visitations of storms and earthquakes, which we remember forever, while, with a sort of thankless forgetfulness, we scarcely think of the calm beauty and regularity which, season after season, passes over us. The rock which, descending from the top of a mountain, lays waste whatever it meets in its progress,--and to attempt to stop which, while its short career lasts, would be almost like instant annihilation,--derives this overwhelming force from an infinite number of independent corpuscles, any one of which, if it had fallen singly, would have been far less destructive than the flutter of an insect's wing; and that tyrannical power of a single man, before which, in unhappy ages of successful oppression, the earth has so often trembled,--as before some power of darkness, endowed with more than human sway,--has derived its irresistible might, not from powers included in itself,--which, in reference to the objects achieved by it, would have been feeble indeed,--but from the united powers of beings still feebler, who were trembling while they executed commands to which themselves alone gave omnipotence.

To this corpuscular view, however, though it is unquestionably the sort of view to which, in our ultimate physical inquiries into the phenomena of matter, we must come, you may, perhaps, not be sufficiently accustomed, to enter fully into the reasoning on the subject. It will probably be less difficult for you, if we take rather, as an illustration, the simpler case of _impulse_; in which the bodies affecting each other are not, as in chemistry, indistinguishable corpuscles, but _masses_, clearly defined, and easily perceptible.

I need not, of course, repeat the arguments formerly stated, to prove that _attraction_, however general it may be as a law of matter at all visible distances, does not continue, but gives place to an opposite tendency at those smaller distances, which we are unable to perceive with our weak organs, and which we learn to estimate only by effects that are inconsistent with absolute contact;--for example, by the well-known fact of the compressibility of bodies, which could not take place if their particles were already in contact, and which by continually increasing resistance to the compressing force that would bring the corpuscles nearer, shews, that there is, at different degrees of nearness, a tendency continuing to operate, which is the very reverse of attraction. There is, therefore, every reason to believe,--since repulsion, as the fact of forcible compression shews, takes place while the particles of bodies are still at a certain distance,--that the motion produced in one body by another, and ascribed to immediate impulse, is produced, without actual contact, by this mutual repulsion, as it is called, of the bodies when brought within a certain invisible degree of vicinity to each other; or, in other words,--for repulsion means nothing more mysterious than this simple fact,--the tendency which bodies, in certain relative positions of apparent but not actual contact, have to fly off from each other with certain degrees of velocity, as in certain other relative positions, of distinguishable distance, they have a tendency to approach each other. This repulsion, or tendency from each other at one point of nearness, is of itself as easy to be conceived, as that _attraction_, or tendency toward each other at other points of distance, to which we give the name of _gravitation_; and it is only from our greater familiarity with the one, as operating at distances which are visible, while the other,--except in a few cases, such as those of magnetism and electricity,--operates only at distances which are imperceptible to us, that we feel a little more difficulty in admitting the _repulsion_ than the _attraction_ of matter. There is then,--however universal gravitation may seem, when we think only of perceptible distances,--a certain point of near approach, before actual contact, at which gravitation ceases; and, beyond this point, the tendency of bodies toward each other is converted,--as the force necessary to compress them evidently shews,--into a tendency from each other; _both_ tendencies, indeed, being _inexplicable_, but the one in no respect more so than the other.

For this apparent digression, on a point of general physics, I make no apology, as it is absolutely necessary for illustrating the particular case to which I am to proceed. The consideration of it requires, what the whole of this discussion, indeed, has already required from you, no small exercise of patient attention; but I trust that I sufficiently prepared you for this, in a former Lecture, when I stated the importance of such attention, not merely in relation to the subject considered at the time, but as a part of your mental discipline, and the advantage which might thus be derived to your intellectual character, from the very difficulties which the subject presents. It is in philosophy, as in many a fairy tale. The different obstacles which the hero encounters, are not progressively greater and greater; but his most difficult achievements are often at the very commencement of his career. He begins, perhaps, with attacking the castle of some enchanter, and has to force his way, unassisted, through the griffins and dragons that oppose his entrance. He finishes the adventure, with the death of the magician--and strips him of some ring, or other talisman, which renders his subsequent adventures comparatively easy and secure. I cannot venture to say, indeed, that a perfect acquaintance with the difficulties of the present question, and of some of the late questions which have engaged us, will be such a talisman to you, in your future career of intellectual science. But I may safely say, that the habit of attentive thought, which the consideration of subjects, so abstract, necessarily produces, in those who are not too indolent to give attention to them, or too indifferent to feel interest in them, is more truly valuable than any talisman, of which accident or force might deprive you. The _magic_ with which this endows you, is not attached to a _ring_, or a gem, or any thing external; it lives, and lives forever, in the very essence of your minds.

When a billiard ball, on being struck, approaches another, which is at rest, it soon arrives at the point of seeming, but not actual contact, at which their mutual attraction ceases, and the force which it has acquired still carrying it on, it passes this bounding point, and arrives at a point at which repulsion has already begun. Accordingly the body, formerly at rest, now flies off, on a principle precisely similar, (though the mere direction be opposite) to that by which the same ball, if dropped from a hand that supported it, would, without the actual impulse of any body, have quitted its state of rest, as in the present case, and have gravitated, or, which is the same thing, have moved of itself toward the earth.

Before the first ball, which you will, perhaps more easily remember by the name, A, arrived so very near to the second ball B, as to have come within the sphere of their mutual repulsion, this second ball was at rest, that is to say, it had no tendency to move in any direction. This state of rest, however, is only one of the many states, in which a body may exist; and if, which must surely be allowed, a body having a tendency to continued motion, be in a different state, from one which has no such tendency, this change of state implying, it must be remarked, not even the slightest loss of identity, has been produced in the body B, by the mere vicinity of the body A. For the sake of illustration, let us now suppose this body A to be hot or luminous. It will still, as before, produce the new state of tendency to motion, in B, when it arrives within the limits of their sphere of repulsion. Is it less conceivable, then, that the mere presence of this hot or luminous body should produce the new sensation of warmth, or of colour, which are different states of the sentient mind, without affecting in the slightest degree the identity of the mind itself, than that it should produce, without any loss of absolute identity, in the body B, an immediate tendency, in that body, to move along with a certain velocity, a state as different from that in which it remains at rest, as the sensation of warmth, which is one state of the mind, is different from the sensation of colour, which is another state of the mind? Nor does the parallel end here; for, since a body at rest, acquiring a tendency to begin motion in one particular direction, as, for example, to move _north_, must be in a different state from that in which it would have been, if it had acquired an instant tendency to move _east_, or in any other direction; and, the direction once begun, being the same, since a body having a tendency to move with one velocity, must, at every moment of its progress, be in a different state from that in which it has a tendency to move with a different velocity, it is evident, that the mere presence of a body may produce, in a second body, according to the difference of their positions and relative magnitudes, a variety of states, that, when all the varieties of direction, and all the varieties of velocity are estimated together, may be considered as infinite,--equal at least in number, to the different states of which the mind is susceptible, in its almost infinite variety of feelings; and all this without any essential change, that can affect the identity of the quiescent or moving body, or any essential change, that can affect the identity of the mind.

I am aware, that, when you consider, for the first time, this assertion of an infinite variety of _states_, corresponding with all the innumerable varieties of direction and velocity, in the tendencies of a simple billiard-ball, which, in the various circumstances supposed, appears to us precisely the same, in all its sensible qualities, you may be apt to conceive, that the assertion must be founded on a mistake, and, from the influence of former prejudice may be inclined to think, that, when it exhibits a tendency to begin to move east, at one time, and, at another time, a beginning tendency to move north, this does not arise from any difference of state in itself, but from its being merely carried along by the first ball, which was itself previously moving in one or other of these particular lines of direction. When the elastic billiard-ball, however, bounds away from the ball which strikes it, this supposition is manifestly inapplicable;--and, in all cases, it is the influence only of former prejudice which can lead you to this opinion,--the influence of that prejudice, by which you may have been accustomed to consider impulse, not as inducing a tendency to motion at some little distance, but as involving the necessity of actual contact. To destroy this prejudice, a very little reflection on the phenomena of elastic bodies, in their shocks and mutual retrocessions, is surely all that can be requisite; and if the motion of B, and consequently its tendency to motion, have begun, without contact of A, as it afterwards continues while A, the elastic body which struck it, is moving back in an opposite direction, it could not be by mechanical trusion, as carried along by A, which is still at some points of distance from it when its motion begins, and at still greater distance the longer the motion continues, that B has assumed any one of its variety of states,--that, for example, in which, in one case, it tends to move east, in another case to move north, in one case to move rapidly, in another slowly. To say that the body acquires this new tendency because it is impelled, is only to say that it is impelled because it is impelled. It is an equally idle use of language, to affirm, as if a word could obviate the difficulty instead of merely stating it,--that A, in communicating a different tendency to B, which was before at rest, does this by a principle, or power of repulsion; for this, as I have said, is merely to state in a single word, the regularity in certain circumstances of the very fact asserted. The different tendencies of B, and consequently the different states in which B exists,--are not the less different, in whatever manner the difference may have been produced, or by whatever word, or combination of words, the difference may be expressed. There is no magic, in the phrase, _principle_ of repulsion, or _power_ of repulsion, which can render the _same_, states or tendencies that are in themselves opposite;--for, as far as we understand the phrase, it expresses nothing more than the invariableness of the simple fact, that in certain circumstances of relative position, bodies have a tendency to fly off from each other, as in certain other circumstances of relative position, which constitute the phenomena of gravitation, they have a tendency to approach. Whatever term we may employ to denote it, it is still a physical fact, that at a certain point of near and seemingly close approach of another mass, a body which was before in a state of rest, acquires immediately a tendency to fly off in different directions, and with different velocities at different times, and consequently, that, if the tendency to begin or to continue motion, in one direction, and with one velocity, be a state different from that which constitutes the tendency to begin or to continue motion in another direction, and with another velocity, the ball B, in these different circumstances, however identical it may be in substance, exists in two different states;--or all states, however different, may be said to be the same.

It may be admitted, then, that the _feeling of rapture_ is a state of mind, completely different from that which constitutes the _feeling of agony_,--that the sensation of the fragrance of a rose, has no resemblance to our conception of a sphere or of an equilateral triangle,--and that, in general, all those thoughts and emotions, which,--more truly than the mere union of the immortal spirit within us with the body which it animates,--may be said to constitute _life_,

“Love, Hope, and Joy, fair Pleasure's smiling train,--
Hate, Fear, and Grief, the family of Pain;”

these, as they prevail, in different hours, render the same individual mind more unlike to itself, if its states or tendencies alone, and not its substantial identity be considered, than the minds perhaps of any two human beings, at the same moment. But still, as we have seen, even from the analogy of the material world,--which was supposed to furnish a powerful objection, it is no argument against the absolute identity of the mind, that exists in different states, however opposite, any more, than it is an argument against the absolute identity of a body, that it, at one moment, has a tendency to one particular motion,--at another moment a tendency to a different motion,--and at another moment, no tendency whatever to motion of any kind; since, in all these cases, as much as in the varying affections of the mind, there is a _change of state_, with absolute _identity of substance_.

FOOTNOTES:

[49] Fontenelle, Pluralité des Mondes, Conversat. 6me.

[50] Gulliver's Travels, part ii. chap. 3.

LECTURE XV.

CONSIDERATION OF THE OBJECTIONS AGAINST MENTAL IDENTITY, CONTINUED; OPINION OF MR LOCKE RESPECTING IDENTITY; SOURCE OF HIS PARADOX ON THIS SUBJECT; AND REFLECTIONS SUGGESTED BY IT.

My last Lecture, Gentlemen, was employed in considering the general objection to the Identity of the Mind, drawn from the contrasts of its momentary feelings,--an objection founded on the supposed incompatibility of diversity of any kind, with strict and absolute _identity_. After the very full examination which it received, it is unnecessary to dwell at any length on the other objection, drawn from changes of general character, in the same individual, at different periods of life, or in different circumstances of fortune; since precisely the same arguments, from the general analogy of nature, which disprove the supposed incompatibility in the one case, disprove it also in the other. Even _matter_ itself, we have seen, may, without the slightest alteration of its identity, exist in an almost infinite variety of states; having, in some of these states, qualities precisely the reverse of those, which it exhibited in other states, attracting what it repelled, repelling what it attracted;--and it surely is not more wonderful, therefore, that the same identical mind, also, should, in relation to the same objects, in different circumstances, be susceptible of an almost infinite variety of affections,--approving, disapproving, choosing, repenting. If we knew nothing more of the relations of two billiard balls to each other, than the phenomena which they exhibit, in the moment of their mutual percussion, when they have been forced, within a certain degree of close vicinity, by the impelling stroke, we should regard them, from their instant reciprocal repulsion, as having a natural tendency to fly off from each other; and, in the state in which they then exist, there is no question that such is their tendency,--a tendency, which, in these circumstances, may be regarded as their genuine physical character. Yet we have only to imagine the two balls placed at a distance from each other, like that of the remotest planet from the sun; and, in traversing the whole wide void that intervenes, what a different physical character would they exhibit, in their accelerating tendency toward each other, as if their very nature were lastingly changed? If there are, then, such opposite tendencies in the same bodies, without any loss of identity, why may not the same minds also have _their_ opposite tendencies, when, in like manner, removed, as it were, into circumstances that are different, loving, perhaps, what they hated before, and hating what they loved? If the change of state be not _temporary_, but _permanent_, the resulting affections may well be supposed to be permanently different; and, indeed, if they be different at all, cannot but be permanently different, like the altered state. It is as little wonderful, therefore, when any lasting change of circumstances is taken into account, that the same individual should no longer exhibit the same intellectual and moral appearances, as that matter, in its different states, should no longer exhibit the same obvious phenomena, _attracting_, perhaps, the very bodies which it before repelled, and _repelling_ the very bodies which it before attracted, and attracting and repelling with differences of force, and consequent differences of velocity in the bodies moved, the varieties of which it would require all the powers of our arithmetic to compute.

When we observe, then, in a mind, which we have long known and valued, any marks of _altered character_,--when, for example, in one, who, by the favour, or rather by the cruelty of Fortune, has been raised, from a situation comparatively humble, to sudden distinctions of power and opulence, we see the neglect of all those virtues, the wider opportunity of exercising which seemed to him formerly the chief, or even the only, advantage that rendered such distinctions desirable,--the same frivolous vanity, which before appeared to him ridiculous in others, and the same contemptuous insolence of pride, which before appeared to him contemptible,--a craving and impatient desire of greater wealth, merely because he has no longer any use to make of it, unless, indeed that it has become more necessary to his _avarice_, than it ever was before to his _want_,--and a gay and scornful indifference to miseries, that are still sometimes able to force themselves upon his view, the relief of which, that once seemed to him so glorious a privilege, would now not require of him even the scanty merit of sacrificing a single superfluity: When we perceive this contrast, and almost say within ourselves, Is this the same being? we should remember that the influence of fortune is not confined to the mere trapping, which it gives or takes away,--that it operates _within_ as much as _without_,--and that, accordingly, in the case now imagined by us, the new external circumstances have been gradually modifying the mind, in the same manner, as new external circumstances of a different kind modify the bodies, which happen to be placed in them,--not affecting their _identity_, but altering their _state_; and that, if we could distinguish, as accurately, the series of changes, which take place in mind, as we can distinguish those which take place in matter, we should not be more astonished, that, in circumstances of rare and unhappy occurrence, a disposition once apparently generous is generous no more, than we are to observe a body, attracted to another body, at one distance, and afterwards repelled from it, in consequence merely of a change of their mutual position,--a change so very slight as to be altogether undistinguishable by our senses.

I have dwelt on this question at much greater length than I should otherwise have done, however interesting it truly is as a question of metaphysics, because I was anxious to obviate a prejudice which is very closely connected with this point, and which, most unfortunately for the progress of the Philosophy of Mind, has given a wrong bias to the speculations of many very enlightened men. No one, I am aware, can be so sincerely sceptical as to doubt, even for a moment, his own identity, as _one continued sentient being_, whatever ingenious sophistry he may urge in support of the paradox which he professes to hold. But still, while the compatibility of diversity with absolute identity, as now explained to you, was but obscurely felt,--a compatibility which, to the best of my remembrance, no writer, with whom I am acquainted, has attempted to illustrate,--the difficulty of reconciling the growth or decay of knowledge, and all the successive contrasts or changes of feeling, which our sensations, thoughts, emotions, exhibit, with the permanent indivisible unity of the same sentient principle, has been sufficient, in many cases, to produce a vague and almost unconscious tendency to materialism, in minds that would not otherwise have been easily led away by a system so illusive; and, where it has not produced this full effect, it has at least produced a tendency, in many cases, to encumber the simple theory of the mental phenomena with false and unnecessary hypotheses, very much akin to those of absolute materialism. Without this absolute materialism, _mind_ must still be left, indeed, as the ultimate subject of sensation, and the difficulty truly remains the same; but it is contrived to complicate, as much as possible, the corporeal part of the process, which precedes this ultimate mental part, by the introduction of phantasms, or other shadowy films, animal spirits, vibratiuncles, or other sensorial motions, that a wider room may thus be left for a play of changes, and the difficulty of accounting for the diversity of sensations be less felt, when it is to be divided among so many substances in almost constant motion; while the attention is, at the same time, led away from the immediate _mental_ change, in which alone the supposed difficulty consists, to the mere _corpuscular_ changes, in which there is no supposed difficulty.

It is a general law of our internal, as well as of our external perceptions, that we distinguish most readily what is least complicated. In a chorus of many voices, a single discordant voice may escape even a nice discriminator of musical sounds, who would have detected instantly the slightest deviation from the melody of a simple air. A juggler, when he wishes to withdraw a single card, is careful to present to us many; and, though the card which he withdraws is truly before our eyes at the very moment at which he separates it from the pack, we do not discover the quick motion which separates it, however suspiciously watchful we may be, because our vigilance of attention is distracted by the number of cards which he suffers to remain. It is not because the card which he removes is not before us, then, that we do not observe the removal of it, but because it is only one of many that are before us. It is precisely the same in those complicated material processes, with which some theorists encumber the simple phenomena of the mind. The difficulty which seems, to them, to attend any diversity whatever in a substance that is identical, simple, indivisible, and incapable of addition or subtraction, remains, indeed, ultimately in all its force, and would strike us equally, if this supposed difficulty were to be considered alone. But many hypothetical vibrations, or other motions, are given to our consideration at the same moment, that glance upon our mental view like the rapid movements of the juggler's hand. We, therefore, do not feel so painfully as before a difficulty which occupies our attention only in part; and, in our feeble estimation of things, to render a difficulty less visible to us, is almost like a diminution of the difficulty itself.

For obviating this tendency to _materialism_, or to what may be considered almost as a species of _semi-materialism_ in the physiology of the mind, it is of no small consequence to have accurate views of the nature of our mental identity. Above all, it is of importance, that we should be sufficiently impressed with the conviction, that absolute identity, far from excluding every sort of diversity, is perfectly compatible, as we have seen, with diversities that are almost infinite. When we have once obtained a clear view of this compatibility, as independent of any additions or subtractions of substance, we shall no longer be led to convert our simple mental operations into long continued processes, of which the last links only are mental, and the preceding imaginary links corporeal; as if the introduction of all this play of hypotheses were necessary for saving that identity of mind, which we are perhaps unwilling to abandon altogether; for it will then appear to us not more wonderful, that the _mind_, without the slightest loss of identity, should at one moment begin to exist in the state which constitutes the sensation of the fragrance of a rose, and at another moment should begin to exist in the state which constitutes the sensation of the sound of a flute, or in the opposite states of love and hate, rapture and agony--than that the same _body_, without the slightest change of its identity, should exist, at one moment, in the state which constitutes the tendency to approach another body, and at another moment in the opposite state which constitutes the tendency to fly from it, or that, with the same absolute identity, it should exist, at different moments in the different states, which constitute the tendencies to begin motion in directions that are at right angles to each other, so as to begin to move in the one case north, in the other east, and to continue this motion, at one time with one velocity, at other times with other velocities, and consequently, with other tendencies to motion that are infinite, or almost infinite.

With these remarks, I conclude what appears to me to be the most accurate view of the question of our personal, or, as I have rather chosen to term it, our mental identity. We have seen, that the belief of this arises, not from any inference of reasoning, but from a principle of intuitive assent, operating universally, immediately, irresistibly, and therefore justly to be regarded, as essential to our constitution,--a principle, exactly of the same kind, as those, to which reasoning itself must ultimately be traced, and from which alone its consecutive series of propositions can derive any authority. We have seen, that this belief,--though intuitive,--is not involved in any _one_ of our separate feelings, which, considered merely as present, might succeed each other, in endless variety, without affording any notion of a sentient being, more permanent than the sensation itself; but that it arises, on the consideration of our feelings as _successive_, in the same manner, as our belief of proportion, or relation in general, arises, not from the conception of _one_ of the related objects or ideas, but only after the previous conception of _both_ the relative and the correlative; or rather, that the belief of identity does not arise as subsequent, but is involved in the very remembrance which allows us to consider our feelings as successive; since it is impossible for us to regard them as successive, without regarding them as feelings of our sentient self;--not flowing, therefore, from experience or reasoning, but essential to these, and necessarily implied in them,--since there can be no result in experience, but to the mind which remembers that it has previously observed, and no reasoning but to the mind which remembers that it has felt the truth of some proposition, from which the truth of its present conclusion is derived. In addition to this positive evidence of our identity, we have seen, that the strongest objections which we could imagine to be urged against it, are, as might have been expected, sophistical, in the false test of identity which they assume,--that the contrasts of momentary feeling, and even the more permanent alterations of general character, in the same individual, afford no valid argument against it; since, not in _mind_ only, but in _matter_ also,--(from a superficial and partial view of the phenomena of which the supposed objections are derived,)--the most complete identity of substance, without addition of any thing, or subtraction of any thing, is compatible with an infinite _diversity of states_.

I cannot quit the subject of identity, however,--though from my belief of its importance, I may already, perhaps, have dwelt upon it too long,--without giving you some slight account of the very strange opinions of Mr Locke on the subject. I do this, both because some notice is due, to the paradoxes,--even though they be erroneous,--of so illustrious a man, and because I conceive it to be of great advantage, to point out to you occasionally the illusions, which have been able to obscure the discernment of those _bright_ spirits, which nature sometimes, though sparingly, grants, to adorn at least that intellectual gloom, which even they cannot irradiate; that, in their path of glory, seem to move along the heavens by their own independent light, as if almost unconscious of the darkness below, but cannot exist there for a moment, without shedding, on the feeble and doubtful throngs beneath, some faint beams of their own incommunicable lustre. It is chiefly, as connected with these eminent names, that fallacy itself becomes instructive, when simply exhibited,--if this only be done, not from any wish to disparage merits, that are far above the impotence of such attempts, but with all the veneration which is due to human excellence, united as it must ever be to human imperfection, “Even the errors of great men,” it has been said, “are fruitful of truths;” and, though they were to be attended with no other advantage, this one at least they must always have, that they teach us how very possible it is for man to err; thus lessening at once our tendency to slavish acquiescence in the unexamined opinions of others, and--which is much harder to be done--lessening also, as much as it is possible for any thing to lessen, the strong conviction, which we feel, that we are ourselves unerring.--The first and most instructive lesson, which man can receive, when he is capable of reflection, is to _think for himself_; the second, without which the first would be comparatively of little value, is to reject, in _himself_, that infallibility, which he rejects in _others_.

The opinion of Locke, with respect to personal identity, is, that it consists in consciousness alone; by which term, in its reference to the past, he can mean nothing more than perfect memory. As far back as we are conscious, or remember; so far and no farther, he says, are we the same persons. In short, what we do not remember, we, as persons, strictly speaking, never did. The identity of that which remembers, and which is surely independent of the remembrance itself, is thus made to consist in the remembrance, that is confessedly fugitive; and, as if that every possible inconsistency might be crowded together in this simple doctrine, the same philosopher, who holds, that our personal identity consists in _consciousness_, is one of the most strenuous opponents of the doctrine, that the soul always thinks, or is _conscious_; so that, in this interval of thought, from consciousness to consciousness,--since that which is essential to identity is, by supposition, suspended, the same identical soul, as far as individual personality is concerned, is not the same identical soul, but exists when it does not exist.

“There is another consequence of this doctrine,” says Dr Reid, “which follows no less necessarily, though Mr Locke probably did not see it. It is that a man be, and at the same time not be, the person that did a particular action.

“Suppose a brave Officer to have been flogged when a boy at school, for robbing an orchard, to have taken a standard from the enemy in his first campaign, and to have been made a General in advanced life: Suppose also, which must be admitted to be possible, that when he took the standard, he was conscious of his having been flogged at school; and that when made a General, he was conscious of his taking the standard, but had absolutely lost the consciousness of his flogging.

“These things being supposed, it follows, from Mr Locke's doctrine, that he who was flogged at school is the same person who took the standard; and that he who took the standard is the same person who was made a General. Whence it follows, if there be any truth in logic, that the General is the same person with him who was flogged at school. But the General's consciousness does not reach so far back as his flogging, therefore, according to Mr Locke's doctrine, he is not the person who was flogged, Therefore the General is, and at the same time is not, the same person with him who was flogged at school.”[51]

But it is needless to deduce consequences, from this very strange paradox; since its author himself has done this, most freely and fully, and often with an air of pleasantry, that, but for the place in which we find it, as forming a part of a grave methodical essay on the understanding, would almost lead us to think, that he was himself smiling, in secret, at his own doctrine, and propounding it with the same mock solemnity with which the discoverer of Laputa has revealed to us all the secrets of the philosophy of that island of philosophers.

He allows it to follow, from his doctrine, that, if we remembered _at night_, and never but at night, one set of the events of our life; as, for instance, those which happened five years ago; and never but in the day time, that different set of events, which happened six years ago; this, “day and night man,” to use his own phrase, would be two as distinct persons, as Socrates and Plato; and, in short, that we are truly as many persons as we have, or can be supposed to have, at different times, separate and distinct remembrances of different series of events. In this case, indeed, he makes a distinction of the visible _man_, who is the same, and of the _person_ who is different.

“But yet possibly it will still be objected,” he says, “suppose I wholly lose the memory of some parts of my life, beyond a possibility of retrieving them, so that perhaps I shall never be conscious of them again; yet am I not the same person that did those actions, had those thoughts that I once was conscious of, though I have now forgot them? To which I answer, that we must here take notice what the word I is applied to; which, in this case, is the man only. And the same man being presumed to be the same person, I is easily here supposed to stand also for the same person. But if it be possible for the same man to have distinct incommunicable consciousness at different times, it is past doubt the same man would at different times make different persons; which we see is the sense of mankind in the solemnest declaration of their opinions; human laws not punishing the mad man for the sober man's actions, nor the sober man for what the mad man did, thereby making them two persons: which is somewhat explained by our way of speaking in English, when we say such an one is not himself, or is beside himself; in which phrases it is insinuated, as if those who now, or at least first used them, thought that self was changed, the self-same person was no longer in that man.”[52]